


legends said (blue, green, and red)

by absolutelyamethyst



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bending (Avatar), Character-centric, Gen, little rambles about the gaang and their elements, more like 4+1 but whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25723741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absolutelyamethyst/pseuds/absolutelyamethyst
Summary: None of them ever really stop to think about what they’d be like without their bending. It’s who they are, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.OR: the gaang are inextricably linked to their elements, even if they don’t quite realize it.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	1. I. Toph

**Author's Note:**

> if anyone's out of character in this it's probably bc I haven't watched aatla in AGES but i wanted hits/kudos validation so here we are

She can’t see. She can’t see the sky. She can’t see the grass. She can’t see the ground. Not at first, anyway. Nothing at first. 

She wants to, maybe, but it’s not even like she knows what she’s missing--nothing was ripped away from her, there was no moment where she had something that was taken away. 

She’s born blind. Being blind is all she knows. And she’s fine with that. It’s everyone else that’s the problem.  _ Everyone else  _ thinks she’s weak.  _ Everyone else _ underestimates her. 

They’re wrong, though. About everything. She’s not weak. And she can see--just not like everyone else. Not like her parents. 

She hasn’t been weak since she learned to earthbend.

~

She can’t see, but she learns to feel things--the wind on her face, the air when it’s thick with an oncoming storm. 

There’s a moment when she’s young that her mother tries to describe to her what “blue” looks like--she fails. Toph goes to the pond near their estate and feels it for herself--water is cool, bites against her fingers as she dips her hand in. Water is supposed to be blue. 

She wonders what it would be like to feel with water what she feels with earth. 

Water is too soft for her liking. 

Earth is solid, warm, hard. It pulses beneath her feet where she walks, burns like an ember beneath her feet. It feels good--a lame way of describing it, really, because there are no words for it. Earthbending is just...right. 

She wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Not even sight. 


	2. II: Sokka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which sokka thinks about his place in the gaang.

He’s jealous of Katara. 

Not  _ bitter  _ toward her. Jealous, envious of her waterbending and her ability to do it so easily, fluidly. It’s like magic, but in the best way, and he knows it’s a part of her and likes it about her, even if sometimes, well. He’s not the best at getting that across. 

In the beginning, he tells himself that there are other ways to protect their village. And he sort of finds them, practices, builds.

He still feels useless, though. 

And left behind. 

And then they meet Aang, and suddenly they’re traveling to meet the Northern Water Tribe, and being with Aang feels  _ right  _ but he still knows, in the back of his mind, that he’ll never be  _ quite  _ as useful as Katara and definitely not like Aang, and it isn’t fair, maybe he just wants--

Maybe he just wants to do the protecting, for once. 

~

He meets Yue. 

And--

Nothing is the same, after that.

~

He’ll keep trying. 

That’s what he’s best at, he learns--he might not be able to bend but he can help in other ways, and at least he can make his friends laugh, sometimes. That’s important too.

Try, try, and try again. 

Their world changes, expands. They meet new people, gain new enemies, and in the end, they’re fighting for what they believe in, and if he’s honest… 

Bending aside, he’s never wanted anything more than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adored writing this. Sokka is such a precious bean, he needs hugs.


	3. III. Zuko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *sniffles*   
> my poor bb boy

He has a complicated relationship with fire. 

Fire is a fierce thing, burning and boiling beneath his skin as he tugs it outward, lets it swirl through the air in a flash of scarlet, gold. It’s a powerful thing, hot and dangerous. But it’s beautiful too, in a way--or it would be, if he had the time to see it as such. 

He doesn’t. He has too much else to do, worry about, plan for. 

_ He’ll get back what’s his, soon enough.  _

He goes years, and years, and  _ years  _ without finding anything and it’s exhausting. The fruitlessness is the exhausting part. There’s absolutely nothing else bothering him--not the isolation, or his uncle’s constant prattling, or the way he tries and tries to bend as passionately as his uncle or as powerfully as his sister but he  _ can’t,  _ it doesn’t come easily at all, and sometimes he’d rather just stop and  _ sulk  _ than get up and try again. 

He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t have the time. 

He works. He works hard. And he’s impatient--his practice will pay off, one day, but never soon enough, never, and sometimes even in light of everything that’s the hardest part of it all. 

He’s never wanted something so badly, and yet it slips through his fingers every time. 

He’s not enough. 

He’s starting to fear he never will be.

If he does find the Avatar. If he does, and he  _ refuses to let himself hope but-- _

If he does, will it take the ache away? The loneliness? The bitterness? The pain?

If he finds the Avatar, will he remember how to be whole again? If even for a moment?

The search, the isolation, the scar on his face, the separation from everything he’s ever loved… maybe if he finds the Avatar, it’ll all be worth it. 

_ He’ll be able to go home again.  _

That’s all he wants, in the end.

But he can’t, won’t--not now. 

He has to earn it first. And he hasn’t. Not yet. 

  
But he will. He  _ will.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! leave a kudos/comment on your way out <3


	4. IV. Katara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn't realize what she has, at first.

At first, she doesn’t realize what she has. 

She loves water, but waterbenders aren’t common in her village, so she doesn’t learn to recognize the push, pull, tug, and drift of the ocean’s call until later, when she’s older. And even then, she doesn’t understand it--not as well as she wants to. 

Waterbending...it’s hard. Complicated. Overwhelming, just like the sea itself.

She’s seen what water can do--her village is surrounded by it, after all. The world around her home is all ice and slush, howling winds and snow, and at its worst she’s seen water break down whole buildings, turn their homes into absolute nothing, like they never existed at all. 

Water is scary. And cold. And fierce. 

All things Katara is not--she feels too much, thinks too much, does too little. 

Too little. Always too little. 

She’s not, though--she knows she’s not. She shrugs away the thoughts when she thinks them, because there are more important things to do than be anxious, and half their village has been gone for most of her life and she’s well acquainted with the clamoring restlessness of worries left unheard.

Some days, in the silence between chores and tasks and things that shouldn’t be her duty but are, Katara lets herself think about how water is nice. Cool. Kind. 

...sometimes. 

It can be gentle--slow-flowing and pleasant and oh-so- _ blue,  _ white-crested as it flows down waterfalls and through cracks in great ice sheets.

It can be stubborn, and that’s a good thing. Water is nature’s guide, water slips between cracks unseen and breaks and  _ bends  _ to make way for something new. Water is purifying, clean, whole. Water is energy. 

She’s lucky enough to know it better than most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! <3


	5. V. Aang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't want to be the Avatar, at first.

He doesn’t want to be the Avatar, at first. 

He knows he  _ should.  _

Later, he’ll look back and wonder why he found out the way he did. It had absolutely crushed him, at the time; the very idea that he was the chosen-born out of  _ billions  _ weighed more on him than the title itself. 

He’d only been a child, at the time. 

And, truthfully, there are moments even after they defeat Ozai that he finds himself wondering the same thing--even though he’s a few years older, even though he can sort of sense that he’s on the path to finding his place in the world. 

It’s a weird feeling. 

He doesn’t talk about it much. The thought--the sheer heaviness of everything--makes him want to scream and cry and laugh all at once. It’s crazy. His life is crazy. 

He wouldn’t have it any other way, really.

Because for everything about being the Avatar that paralyzes him at night, there are a dozen  _ more  _ things he wouldn’t trade away for anything. Like the way he’s so connected to everything, or the way he can connect with his past lives, or the way just him  _ being  _ the Avatar has given me friends that have become closer than anything. 

He’d never give up his bending either. 

It’s strange--even though he was born an airbender, the other elements come every bit as naturally to him as air, even if it’s not at first, even if it takes a  _ lot  _ of work for some of the elements to make sense. 

Maybe he doesn’t quite mesh with earth, but he learns to find solace in its steadiness in time. And maybe he’s not as fierce as a firebender should be, but he’s grateful for it’s quick strength. And waterbending wil always be special to him, for...reasons, and he’ll always love the way water is a two-sided coin--lazy and cool on end, fast and ferocious on the other. 

There are voices in his head, and memories that aren’t his own, sometimes, but his path as the Avatar is his and his alone and there’s comfort in that too. He’s the Avatar. Maybe it’s taken him a while to grow into it, but it’s who he is. It’s made him who he is. And it’ll make him so much more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lemme know in the comments if you'd like me to continue writing stuff for aatla/lok!


	6. VI. To the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which fate changes hands and hope is reborn.

Destiny is a strange thing, really. 

Fate is a thing that should be admired and feared in the same breath, by everything, everyone. Fate has a strong hand. Fate controls all. 

The Avatar is the one exception to this rule, and really, control is a shoddy thing anyway, but that’s beside the point. 

Things move on. 

People die. The world still turns. Everyone goes their own way. 

And progress happens. That’s not new--change is good, they know that. Traditions are lovely and exist for a reason, but newness is good. Newness is different--fresh. 

Tides change and _they_ crash back into a familiar reality--humanity, once again tethered by the ache that comes with living among old bones.

Somewhere, beneath the haziness and pain that come with old age and a life long lived, Aang is… restless. 

He breathes his last breath with Katara by his side. 

And thousands and thousands of miles away, in a village framed by ice and frost and  _ blue...a  _ baby girl takes her first breath and  _ sobs,  _ loud and long and  _ raw,  _ for the first time ever. 

Destiny is a strange thing, really. It turns--turns and turns and turns but it’s always going. It never stops, even when things are dark and look ever-so grim. It’s always going. 

And when the world needs it most, that fact alone brings the most important thing of all:

Hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this a terrible ending? Probably. Did I promise a Suki-pov then back out last minute? Maybeeee. 
> 
> (in my defense, I didn't feel I could do her character justice--the last thing I'd want to do is botch her lovely characterization, she is an absolute angel)
> 
> regardless! thank you so much to everyone who's read this darling fic! it's skyrocketed in hits and that absolutely means the world to me! i may or may not be debating doin' something similar with legend of korra, in which case...be on the lookout for that~


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